Twelve-year-old Sarah Jacob was the most famous of the Victorian fasting girls, who claimed to miraculously survive without food, serving as flashpoints between struggling religious, scientific, and political factions. In this novel based on Sarah's life and premature death from what may be the first documented case of anorexia, an American journalist, recovering from her husband's death in the Civil War, leaves her home and children behind to travel to Wales, where she investigates Sarah's bizarre case by becoming the young girl's friend and confidante. Unable to prevent the girl's tragic decline while doctors, nurses, and a local priest keep watch, she documents the curious family dynamic, the trial that convicted Sarah's parents, and an era's hysterical need to both believe and destroy Sarah's seemingly miraculous power. Intense, dark, and utterly compelling, The Welsh Fasting Girl delves into the complexities of a true story to understand how a culture's anxieties led to the murder of a child.
"[A] moving novel. . . O'Connor's bleak, powerful story serves as an affecting homage to a girl whose community failed to protect her."
Publishers Weekly
"The real miracle lies in the capacity of Sarah's singular, dark fate to illuminate the socioeconomic, religious, scientific, philosophic, and political cultures and conflicts of [the] time. . . A transcendent historical novel."
Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"Varley O'Connor's beautiful and brilliant novel takes us deep into the mysteries of virtue's conspiracy with evil and the human spirit's war against itself. With spot-on historical detail and scintillating language, the novel fascinates and moves us, and uses the story of a nineteenth-century Welsh farm girl to deliver cogent insights into contemporary issues regarding gender and family."
Stephen O'Connor, author of Orphan Trains and Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings
